The Thing
The "thing" is an idea in the Fizz community inspired by rhetoric from Pat Metheny. There's an ongoing debate about what the nature of the thing truly is, but it's widely understood to be this mystical essence that can be found in "definitive" musical ideas. Those moments when a buildup goes perfectly into the drop, when a perfectly subversive moment happens during a solo, or when a melody just "makes sense". All of these are examples of peak artistic human intention, thereby achieving the thing.
Believers in the thing will insist that they can recognize it, even in music that they don't personally like. They'll say stuff like "This music isn't even my cup of tea, but that moment right there was super definitive. It has the thing."
You just kind of know the thing when you see it. The melodies of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Hot Cross Buns clearly have the thing. There's a deep order to them, and they sound like an ultimate, maximized "steelmanned" version of themselves. The polar opposite of AI generated background music slop where there's no melody and the chords go all over the place but end up nowhere.
In dark fizz, the mass awareness and pursuit of the thing is seen as the only antidote to the threatening rise of slop. Something cannot be slop if it contains the thing. An idea can have a good "vibe" but still be slop, slop can even sound good, but slop can never achieve the thing.
Origin
In the Pat Metheny interview on Rick Beato's YouTube channel, Metheny uses the phrase "the thing" to describe this mystical, cosmically important musical objective.
"Our lives went in wildly different directions, but to the very end, I was somebody he would call when stuff would get serious, because he knew I wouldn't bullshit him and also that my point of view was not too influenced by you know... the stuff. It was more about the thing." - Pat Metheny on making music with Jaco Pastorious
"I've run across guys who can play all this stuff but it's like... You know... That feel thing isn't there, and the feel is the thing" - Pat Metheny
Thing Anti-Realism
The belief that the thing isn't real, and is just something a bunch of people made up.
Thing Non-Cognitivism
The belief that the term "the thing" doesn't describe a mystical phenomenon, but still vaguely refers to a specific musical property that is yet to be properly defined.
Thing Subjectivism
The belief that the thing is the essence of one's personal taste, and that each individual has their own thing.